Lynching of Jo Reed

On April 30, 1875, police officer Robert Frazier attempted to arrest Jo Reed, an African American man, at his Nashville home on suspicion of domestic violence, intending to take him to the workhouse. Reed told Frazier he would not go and shortly afterward shot him in the chest. Frazier died of the wound. Reed fled but was arrested shortly afterward in Davidson County and taken to the Davidson County Jail.

Following the arrest, unidentified individuals in the town began calling for Reed to be lynched. At 4 p.m. that same day, Tennessee Governor James D. Porter and Nashville Mayor Morton Boyte Howell met at the Maxwell House Hotel and asked Sheriff E. D. Whitworth and Deputy-Sheriff Wilkinson to post an additional guard in front of Reed's cell. The sheriff's office was unable or unwilling to provide the guard.

At dusk, a white mob gathered outside the jail. Police officers stood in front of the crowd, and the mayor personally asked the mob to disperse. Despite this, twenty-five unmasked men entered the jail and dragged Reed from his cell. They placed a noose around his neck and took him to a suspension bridge, where they hanged him. The rope broke during the hanging, and mob members shot at Reed as he fell, but he jumped into the river and escaped. Reed survived the attempted lynching, returned briefly to his house where he was seen by a physician, and then left Nashville, reportedly heading west, possibly toward Kansas.

The Nashville City Council formally condemned the lynching, and the incident was reported critically by the Memphis Daily Appeal. On July 13, 1875, two white men, John W. Luster and Dan Gilmore, were arrested in connection with breaking into the jail. Luster admitted to being outside the jail but denied entering it. No further prosecutions are recorded in connection with the mob action.

The case is notable in the historical record because, unlike many similar incidents of the period, both the state governor and the city mayor intervened before the lynching attempt, seeking additional protection for Reed, though the sheriff's office did not supply it.

In June 2019, Jo Reed's name was included on a memorial in downtown Nashville acknowledging him as a victim of an attempted lynching in 1875. The memorial effort was organized by a coalition called "We Remember Nashville" together with the Equal Justice Initiative, as part of broader commemoration and education related to four documented cases of lynching in Nashville during the late 19th century.